Worktop installation in Rippleside

Yes. Rippleside is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG11. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. The clock on the bay runs whether the lift is free or not. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Internal walls are lath on timber studs while the flank walls are brick, so two walls in the same kitchen take a fixing completely differently. The day is planned backwards from the hall. A structure this old is worked with, not corrected. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut.

Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Someone stays on the trailing end the whole way in. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit.

It is on the short list of three for this patch, with worktop replacement first. Same template, same workshop, same fitters whichever it is. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Sealed before we leave. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Consecutive days, one kitchen at a time.

Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The island is set against the perimeter, not a wall. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up. Clear the full hall and stairs route of furniture, bikes, coats and stair-gates, and keep the front door propped and unobstructed for the carry. A landlord with several similar flats usually wants one specification repeated, so the material, the edge detail and the upstand height are recorded and reused rather than rechosen each time. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A day out of use, told to whoever lives there.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. A hundred and forty years of alterations sit under the current kitchen, and the worktop is what has to sit flat on top of all of it. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. The last piece down is the one nearest the door.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. The parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen.

Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Many were built with a solid sub-floor to the rear rooms, so the kitchen floor is concrete and level while the front of the house is suspended timber. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. The tops go on level even when nothing else is.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Ceilings are generous and the rooms are narrow, so the runs are long, the aisle is tight and there is nowhere to stand a slab on edge. Protection down, dry-lay, scribe, then bond: the order matters more in a difficult room than an easy one. Silicone finishes the job; it does not rescue it.